A "fit and healthy" man who was suffering from earache has died after contracting meningitis.
Gareth Rowlands, a painter and decorator from Rhiwlas in Gwynedd, Wales, became ill with earache which transpired to be the beginnings of a severe case of meningitis.
Doctors desperately tried to treat him by placing him in an induced coma, but subsequently discovered that he had suffered such severe brain damage as a result of the infection that his brain was rendered "incompatible with life".
